Just outside, towering over my little tent at Arrow Glacier Camp, were huge craggy rock formations. “They’re old,” Wilson told me, and I wondered secretly if they’d crumble onto my tent and crush me. I decided it was better not to think about it, trusting the team would not put my tent up here and out of the way if it weren’t safe. In fact, I think they did it to give me a wind barrier. This part of the journey made me nervous. The trekking had been relatively easy up to this point, but the breach is an intimidating rock face and from my low vantage point it was towering above me, several thousand feet of big boulder: a tall rocky wall sticking straight up. All that I’d read indicated BIG RESPECT was appropriate and in order. I worried for the safety of the men, maybe to avoid worrying about my own.

After dinner on the evening before we “attacked the Breach,” as they say in climbing parlance, I must have been looking fearful because Honest gave me strong advice. He pointed to his thighs and said, “Deb, I know you are very strong here. What I need is for you to be strong HERE,” as he tapped his head. I nodded yes, and told him I’d work on it that evening. I slept with a field of avalanche scree on one side of my tent, just beneath a lumbering wall of well-worn rock that looked about ready to crumble, on the other side. It was windy and cold and forbidding (or was that just me?).